Halloween Pranks Around Creepy and Scenic Graveyards

Forget the Halloween/Masquerade ball or party you usually attend or set up for close friends and family. You can set aside decorating your home or preparing gory trick or treat bags for the little ones. This year, you are treating yourself and foregoing traditions; you are travelling to face your fears.

If you are scouring the Internet for a destination that’s fitting for the season and can make your hair rise at the back of your nape, there are many ghoulish destinations that are fighting it out to make it to the yearly list of the bests. One set of destinations you would want to check out would be “The world’s 8 Most Beautiful Cemeteries” posted in The Daily Telegraph – Travel News Section’s

They’re not the first thing that comes to mind when you think “tourist attraction”, but cemeteries get high traffic from travellers.

There’s even a website devoted to globetrotting grave appreciation: Cemetarytravel.com.

The editor of the site, Loren Rhoads, has documented more than 150 cemeteries, and notes on her site: “I’ve been a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies since 1999. I joined the Association of Graveyard Rabbits in Summer 2011…”

And on that note … here are some of the world’s most beautiful cemeteries …

Waverley Cemetery, Sydney, Australia

… “Under Sydney’s perpetually sunny skies, the sparkling ocean views from the cliffs of Waverley are practically to die for… It features a large collection of Victorian and Edwardian monuments. Influential Australians like poet Henry Lawson and writer Dorothea Mackellar are buried here.”

Panteón Antiguo, Oaxaca, Mexico

Established by Spanish missionaries in the 16th century, the cemeteries of Xoxo are a must-see on October 31st, when locals celebrate the Day of the Dead…. so they decorate graves with flowers, candles, figurines, and food for their arrival. Families gather to drink, eating their dearly departed’s favourite foods, and listening to mariachis.

Highgate Cemetery, London, England

This Victorian-era cemetery has amazing views of London, gorgeous scenery and lots of famous grave sites… “In the 19th century, people flocked to Highgate Cemetery. They brought picnics and strolled the lanes…”

There are more than 170,000 people buried there, including philosopher Karl Marx ….

Neptune Memorial Reef, Key Biscayne, United States

This underwater cemetery is the world’s largest man-made reef and offers the opportunity to have a “green” funeral. Ashes are cast into concrete sculptures that become part of the reef… Families can then snorkel or even get dive certified so they can regularly visit their loved ones. … tour operators offer diving excursions to this reef city of the dead.

The other cemeteries that made it to the list are: Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris, France; South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta, India; Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, United States; and Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, United States.

Cimetière du Père Lachaise is not only the most-visited in Paris, France, but in the world with about 1.5 million visitors a year. The prominent names to meet here are Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, and Chopin among others.

A very old but still scenic cemetery, South Park Street Cemetery dates back to 1767. It is known for Indo-Saracenic architecture monuments that offers some aspects of India’s colonial history and culture.

Bonaventure Cemetery is so beautiful so that John Muir wrote at one time that even the living would love to share the space with the dead. It used to be a part of a plantation; in its state as a cemetery, it was rendered so quaint by birds, oaks draped with Spanish moss, and other forms of wildlife.

Just like anything with name Hollywood in it, this Hollywood Forever Cemetery is full of A-listers such as Jayne Mansfield, director Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, and L’Wren Scott among others. Classic movies are still played here under the stars on star-lit summer night using a marble crypt wall to project against.

Each year, around Halloween, people get incomprehensively “crazy” wanting to get into to such an eerie place and experience what they would normally run away from some other days. What could be making them extra courageous comes midnight of October 31? The answer is immaterial; what everyone knows is that it is a great day to “party” and have fun with the dead. If you dare, go ahead and check out these creepy cemeteries or some haunted hospitals and houses.

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Barbara Walsh-Kumm and John Kumm have established this website in order to provide the avid visitor with current hints and tips, news and opinions relating in general to travel, and more particularly to overseas trips, vacations and holiday adventures.